Date: 27th of December 2007

G’day All,

More fresh snow this morning – another 10cm of the fluffy dry stuff. Breakfast was the regulation continental with all the trimmings. It’s actually quite interesting to see the breakfast habits of everyone. There are a couple of athletes who are not morning / breakfast people and don’t have anything at all (not good!), some who just go the bowl of cereal and there are a few who try and cram in as much food as possible.

The morning looked so promising for the moguls group with their new course in great condition. However the unpredictable weather soon put dampener on that with the cloud coming in and restricting visibility to around 15 metres so the group decided to move onto plan B. This involved Brighid and Kate joining Chris and his group at the Air site while Ridley joined forces with Legs and Toppa and coached the boys at the bottom jump of the course. Brodie, Bryn, Alex and Jack all put in a massive effort hiking the bottom jump for around an hour before heading in for chicken burgers.
Unfortunately due to the visibility Ridley was unable to get any video footage of the new course today; hopefully this will change over the next couple of days. The afternoon for the group was spent at the air site. The visibility made for some challenging jumping but the group overall stepped up and did very well. With the main mogul course now up and running here, Ridley’s next project is to get the 2nd or skills mogul course operational. This will provide a flatter course that will enable the groups to work on technique improvement.

The boarders rushed out the door today thinking there was more fresh snow than there actually was. They headed to some of their favorite gully’s and bike paths on the six pack to find that in some spots there was in fact more than 10cms and it was a light as yesterdays dump. With some of the group happy to explore and Beggsy keen to get the others in the park to do some training for the rail jam on the weekend the guys finally settled on a run that all the group was happy with. It had a little bit of everything and started with a drop you could go as big or small as you wanted into powder followed by some nice powder gully’s which led straight into the park. After the park the guys found a mountain bike wallride in the trees which popped them out back to the six pack. Back at the drop, Jack stood out with a nice frontside 540 while Jamie, Kane and Jay all tried switch 180s while the rest of the group worked on styling their straight airs. The Cozella bros both stepped up and had a go and Rowan going bigger and bigger every run. In the park Nath was doing some nice nose presses, Oli was trying some presses and Jamie was boardsliding everything he could find including the corrugated pipe feature. Kane and Jack did some nice noseslides to 270 out on the corrugated pipe. The standout of the morning had to be Rowan Cozella who hit his first box for the season doing some nice 5050s.

This afternoon the group picked where to go and it was decided that the air site would be the best place for everyone. Jordy picked up where he left off working on holding his speed down the landing hill with a nice controlled stop. Rowan stepped and hit the small jump straight off the bat and nailed a few nice straight airs before coming down hanging on the knoll with Beggsy for the remainder of the afternoon. Jay finally got some nice ollies off the small jump and is now ready to pop a few grabs in. Oli, Nath and Jamie all moved on to the big floater this afternoon doing some nice straight airs and getting confident with the bigger air. Jamie was riding so solid all day and this afternoon it was hard to stop him. He just kept on jumping smooth straight airs including a nice melon and nose grab off the big jump. Even at the end of the day after the site had closed he was hitting Beggsy up for another jump. The standout of the afternoon was Jack Callin who just sessioned the big jump doing laps by himself and showing solid progression He did one straight air before unleashing a barrage of frontside 360s grabbing both melon and Indy, it won't be long before he is doing nice big 540s showing the group how it's done.

The Freeride group headed out this morning and went straight over to the air site where they begin their usual warm up routine and then spent some time prepping the jumps and landing with it paying off as everything was looking amazing for their first full day on the air site.  Conrad and Hamish started things off with the big jump getting right back into their groove working on 3’s.  Conrad was adding some nice mutes and double safety grabs while Hamish was working on controlling his rotations.  Amy, Bassett and Lauren all worked on their take off (pops) on the little jump with all of them coming along nicely so Chris decided to show them a few basic grabs to try.  Everyone nailed the safety grab and a few moved on to Japans.  Lauren was showing great progress with her pops going bigger then everyone. 

In the afternoon it was right back to the site to continue the progress with Lauren, Bassett and Amy playing with their different grabs.  Amy had some nice safety grabs and Bassett was going huge while Conrad joined his coach for most of the afternoon hitting the big jump.   Conrad stepped up and nailed a few 5’s which was impressive given the very tough landing with all the snow and the steepness of the run.

Pinky goes outside the camp today and is awarded to the Silver Star seasons pass office. I went in yesterday and asked them to re-print all of our seasons passes so we can get the AWSCS logo on the back. I asked them to call when they were ready and I would come down and pick them up. No phone call so I gathered they did not re-print them. So wrong….. they were re-printed which meant that the current passes we all had were deactivated. This caused a small problem at the bottom of the lift this morning when know ones passes would work. A few phone calls and some sweet talking and all was fixed. Good on ya guys!

Tonight’s activity was trampolining down at the Kelowna Gymnastics Club. Chris took an eager group of 14 down for a two hour session of hucking and flipping. They departed straight after training and were back for a later dinner at 7.30pm.

Lunch today another of Emma’s legendary homemade soups, this time it was chicken vegetable… very tasty! The camp favorite made a welcome return – chicken burgers.  Normally most are restrained for lunch especially the girls, but roll out the chicken burgers and people turn into crazy eating machines. Roanna, one of the Ski & Snowboard Australia kids staying with us managed to demolish two full burgers even though she is only half the boys size. Dinner was beef stir-fry in a peanut sauce and teriyaki noodles followed by an amazing apple and blueberry crumble…oh yer!
 
A big shout out to Sam who has been doing an impressive job of keeping the site updated with photo, movies and the daily blog. We hit the 500 mark with photos yesterday and should hot the 1000 just after New Year. Well done Pez!
Remember parents, if you’re interested in picking up a souvenir photo and movie pack of your child then please contact us ASAP.

Until tomorrow.

Stowie